The Enforcement and Vigilance wing of GHMC has unearthed yet another scam in the sanitation wing of the corporation, whereby biometric attendance system was being successfully circumvented through the use of cloned fingerprints.
Six teams from the EVDM (Enforcement, Vigilance and Disaster Management) wing inspected different areas of the city on Wednesday, and confiscated a total of 84 synthetic fingerprints from the sanitation field assistants (SFA). Seventeen SFAs were rounded up from Charminar, Malakpet, Kukatpally, Musapet, and L.B. Nagar areas for various irregularities, and cloned fingerprints were confiscated from nine among them, informed Director, EVDM, Viswajit Kampati during an interaction with the media.
The Aadhaar-based biometric attendance system was introduced in 2017 for taking the attendance of the sanitation workers in various circles of GHMC. A total 1,200 biometric machines were procured, and kept in the custody of the SFAs to take attendance of sanitation and entomology workers every day. The machines were designed to work only within the designated area assigned to the SFA, through GPS connectivity. Attendance was to be taken thrice every day from all the workers, to ensure that they are on the field.
The system was brought in to weed out bogus workers drawing salaries from GHMC, which was rampant earlier, raining cash for the third-party agencies paying the outsourced workers. GHMC officials had earlier boasted that through biometric attendance, the corporation could save up to ₹40 crore in a year. However, they were oblivious to or condoned the fact that the agents had reportedly brought in others impersonating as sanitation workers to record their initial fingerprints so that they could continue to defraud the corporation.
Later, their fingerprints were cloned using gum and other chemicals, following the procedure available on Youtube. Salaries paid to the bogus workers were being pocketed by the third-party agencies, after due payments to everybody involved, officials informed.
Each group/unit consists of seven to eight sanitation workers, and each SFA is in charge of three such groups. GHMC pays for the services of an estimated 22,000 sanitation and entomology workers altogether. Each worker is paid a salary of ₹12,000 per month.
“SFAs are the bottom most rung of the corruption hierarchy in the sanitation wing, and were caught red-handed, as they are in control of the machines. If properly investigated, bigger heads will roll,” said an official under the condition of anonymity.
The fraud was unearthed reportedly based on repeated complaints from Yakutpura about garbage piling up and not enough sanitation workers seen around. Mr. Kampati informed that a report will be submitted to the GHMC Commissioner M. Dana Kishore and action will be taken against the offenders. The nine SFAs will be removed from duties, and criminal cases will be filed against them.
